Mission

In my work with students I have three very clear goals:

1.  To teach you to own your education

It’s really easy to feel like school is all about following rules and orders.  You are told to do homework every night, told to write papers, take tests.  These probably aren’t things you’d choose to do on your own.   But, believe it or not, you can train yourself to actually enjoy even the most boring assignments.  You can learn to feel like you are choosing to do the work instead of feeling like the work is being forced on you.

I help my students to understand how their brains work.  Every single one of us thinks differently.  There is no “ordinary” brain.   The more you get to know yourself – your strengths, your challenges, your innate curiosities and passions – the more interesting and fun learning becomes.   You begin to use your education to learn about who you are. And when you can connect what you are learning to who you are, you will own your education.

2. To help you discover your writing voice

You can learn to write clear, grammatically correct sentences and focused paragraphs, but without a sense of your own voice, you will simply be fulfilling the requirements of an assignment, never doing more than average work.    Writers talk a lot about the “voice” of a story or poem.  Voice encompasses an author’s perspective, the particular things he or she notices, as well as his or her worldview, beliefs and questions.  But voice is also defined by the way a writer combines sentences and arranges paragraphs, and by the particular words that a writer chooses.    You discover your voice by taking risks:  writing things you wouldn’t normally write, experimenting with new forms, and learning about how language works.

3.  To help you develop confidence

When you are confident, you believe in yourself.     And this belief is not just a belief in how you represent yourself – your particular style, your interests or hobbies.  It is a belief in who you really are – your feelings and thoughts, your questions and certainties.   You believe in all of it.  You gain confidence when you get to know yourself, when you take charge of your education, reach your goals and become a successful student.  You also gain confidence by communicating your ideas clearly and effectively, and by writing what is true to you.